Anniversary White Water Rafting

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 8, 2023

What do a couple of wanderers that have been married for 42 years do to celebrate such a momentous anniversary? We are blessed to get to wander God's wonders every day, so what experience could make a wedding anniversary special? How about a splurge on tickets to go white water rafting with a guide?

We chose the Browns Canyon section of the Arkansas River. With Class III to IV rapids, we knew we were going to get wet. So we didn't take a camera with us in the boat. (But we went back to the Arkansas River days later to get some pictures of the area. So most of the river pictures in this blog were taken after our anniversary.) We arrived at Dvorak Rafting at 8:30, and they took us and our raft to the start of the canyon at Fisherman's Bridge. We were inside the Browns Canyon National Monument at this site. This was a very popular put-in site for raft trips. On the day we were taking pictures for this blog we couldn't believe how many rafts were starting here at the same time! We counted 15 rafts full of people in the picture we took at Fisherman's Bridge!

It was chilly the morning of our raft trip, but sunny. We started with our safety lesson on what to do if we were thrown out of the boat. We were sure hoping that didn't happen. But before our day was over, we did see that rescue plan in motion when a child fell out of a raft right in front of us. Our guide appropriately cinched up our life jackets so tight that we could barely breathe. If we didn't die of drowning, it looked like we could die of oxygen deprivation. They were serious about safety and things that can go wrong on this river, and they weren't afraid to put a little fear into their passengers.

The Arkansas River is well below the parking lot at Fisherman's Bridge, and we had to get our raft down that steep hill. We were the only two in the raft with our guide, Jose. We can tell you that getting that big raft down the hill was hard work for three people. Most rafts have 6 or 7 people to manhandle their raft down the steep slope. It looks like that sleek metal launching rail will make it easy, but it was still hard work.

We had more instructions and pep talks as we got to the water's edge. While it was busy when we were taking pictures, we had the place to ourselves early on a Tuesday morning when we were launching.

The first section of the Arkansas River we encountered was pretty calm, so it was a good time to practice our rafting skills that Jose was teaching us. He would yell, "Forward!" and we were both supposed to row forward; and "Back!" meant we were both supposed to row backwards. But if he yelled "Left Back!" you have to do some calculations and remember what side of the boat you were in. "Left Back!" means that Mark rows backward because he's on the left, but Denisa must row forward because she's on the right. You need to figure this out and move appropriately very quickly. That's because tricky instructions like that were needed to maneuver around a rock or hit a rapid at the best angle--things that happen very fast.

Jose would also yell, "Forward hard!" which means that we needed to give big effort to get out of a jam. If he yelled, "Lean!" you must hang on to the rope at the side of the boat and lean into the center. If he yells, "Oh Shit!" you should jump into the bottom of the boat and start praying. We were glad that we didn't hear that last command very many times.

Jose also taught us the three rules of white water rafting: 1) never let go of your paddle; 2) hang on to the paddle if you fall out; 3) don't stand up in the boat. After the initial quiet section of water, we entered the more turbulent part of the Arkansas River right after Cottonwood Creek empties into it. It seemed like we just recovered from one set of rapids when another set appeared around a bend in the river. Mark couldn't wipe the smile off his face!

We went through a series of class II and III rapids as we got into the groove of the raft. These different drops and rock sections have comforting names like "Pinball," "The Raft Ripper," "Widowmaker," and "The Big Drop." "Pinball" is named for the section of large rocks in the river that a raft must ping between like it was inside a pinball machine.

The "Big Drop" is . . . well, a big drop. We didn't have a picture of the one on our route, but here's another section of the Arkansas River with a little drop. Mark loved these technical sections of the river, while Denisa just hung on for dear life.

We found out there are many rafting companies in the Buena Vista area. In the pictures in the blog today you will see yellow rafts, red rafts, blue rafts, turquoise rafts . . . with different insignias on them. Each one of those are different rafting companies, with over twenty in the area. How could we ever decide which one to go with? We wanted to go on our anniversary, and in the morning to avoid afternoon storms. Some companies don't have trips at that less popular time of Tuesday morning. We found several companies had groupons that reduced the price considerably. We decided on Dvorak because they had great reviews, they had a groupon, and they would guarantee us a Tuesday morning trip even if no one else signed up. No one else reserved a trip that morning, so we had the raft and the guide all to ourselves. We found that to be a blessing and a curse. The curse was that we had less help in rowing and carrying the boat. On another day we found another couple rafting with their own private guide, but that was certainly not the norm. The blessing is that we had a romantic anniversary paddle with a guide. Imagine a romantic gondola ride--but with white water rapids.

We made one stop along the way at a sandy beach area with a high cliff. Mark jumped off the cliff, but we have no pictures since we didn't have a camera. We could have described the beautiful swan dive that Denisa made off that high cliff. But we must be truthful and just say that Denisa was happy to be a spectator. We were one of the first boats on the river the morning of our float trip, but later we got passed by rafts with more people in them. A six-person raft has six "motors" while we only had two. We had to row more than we expected, and the river got more crowded as the morning progressed.

We enjoyed some beautiful views with the mountains towering over us . . .

and the walls of Browns Canyon National Monument around us. We had wandered into another of God's wonders on this anniversary.

It turned windy towards the end of our journey, and we had to row hard just to go forward in a tranquil section of the river. Our legs were tired from tensing up and gripping through sections of the most intense rapids. Our arms were tired from long periods of intense rowing. By the end of our half-day float, we were both tired! We can't imagine going on a full-day float! 

We really enjoyed our time in the raft with Jose. He had lots of stories to tell about his rafting career. He was from Costa Rica, and he loved it when he found out that we went on a white water rafting trip when we visited Costa Rica in 2014. He spoke five languages because he moves around the world to be in rafting weather all year long. He has led rafting trips in Italy, Norway, Germany, Brazil, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Australia, and many locations in the United States.

We got out at Hecla Junction, in a quiet section of the Arkansas River.

This is where all of the half-day Browns Canyon rafting trips get off the water. The parking lot was full of big buses to transport the big companies' customers back to their cars parked at their shops. Because Dvorak was a small company, we had a van waiting for us.

Jose had his phone in the van, and he took a picture of the three of us in the raft at the end of our trip. He emailed them to us so we did have three pictures of our anniversary day and our white water adventure. Of course, we could have bought the pictures that the professional photographer took as we screamed through one of the white water sections. But at $37 per picture, we liked Jose's free pictures better.

We were finished in the early afternoon, and we were tired! Our arms and legs were surprisingly tired from this rafting trip. We deserved a nap before we went out to eat at Quincy's Steak House for our anniversary dinner. What a great way to celebrate a 42nd wedding anniversary!